Losing The Biggest Loser

As someone who spends 8 hours a day rotting her brain with filing and paperwork, when I go home at night I like to continue to rot my brain with some television. There are only a handful of shows that I watch regularly, and for the past year The Biggest Loser was one of them. I tuned in to Season 10 last night only to turn it off 45 minutes later totally disgusted with NBC and possibly all of humanity, though maybe I shouldn't lump those two entities together.

1) Almost every single contestant, or potential contestant, had a heart-wrenching tragedy in their life to tell us about. In a typical season there's usually one or two people who have had something terrible happen which leads to their issues with food. But if you wanted to make it on Season 10 the mere fact that you have to ride a scooter around Walmart isn't tragic enough. Nope, if you're 450 lbs and your mother didn't die on your 10th birthday, or your dog didn't get hit by a bus while you were giving CPR to your blind sister (who later died), then forget it. There was cancer, there was SIDS, there were drownings, and beatings, and just an entire Lifetime Movie Network database full of depressing shit, and I really just couldn't take it anymore.

2) The way that they chose the contestants was so horrible and stupid. They chose three people to do a "step challenge" where they had to walk up and down a step 100 times. The first two people to get to 100 got to be on the show. Therefore, the fattest and most out of shape person has no chance in hell of not finishing last. They get all excited about how they're going to finally turn their life around, then they fail the challenge and get sent home because they're too fat. Meanwhile, some lady who weighs 230 lbs, which is nothing for this show, gets whisked off in a limousine. Way to go Bob & Jillian, way to change America.

Some cities had a different challenge that was even worse - the three contestants had to run a mile. One guy fell smack on his face TWICE and practically went into cardiac arrest. Then, as suspected, he didn't make it onto the show. Then everybody who lost gets a little pep talk from Bob who says "You need to lose weight or you're going to die. Unfortunately our asshole producers thought we'd get more ratings starting the season like this. Here's a couple of Subway coupons."

So I shut it off and I'm not sure if I'll ever put it back on again. I could end this post by saying I'll instead use those two hours to get some exercise, but why end on a lie.